Felting Picspam

[apollinav]

~feels accomplished~

Today I looked at my last picspam post and I realized how much progress I've made since April.  I can now identify my wool breeds by touch.  I'm dyeing my own raw wool, raw silk, and raw bamboo fibers.  I'm slowly mastering three techniques - wet felting, nuno felting, and needle felting.  And I'm able to look at wool roving and know roughly what my finished piece will look like - sometimes I'm able to make that happen. 

I've progressed a fair bit since my erm... 'lump o' wool' disaster, so I figured I'd share a handful of pics with you.

Picspam cut.

 

The first is undyed alpaca with curled locks of unprocessed wool for texture.
The second nubbly falklands wool. It was a really slow felter, but it's very nice.

Here's another alpaca bag, and you can see the lining I put into it.  The bottom is decorated with a hodgepodge of wools, silk and glitz.
*grins*  I SOLD this bag.  *dances*

Elf booties.  I can't help myself.  I think the next pair needs a really big curl and a bell.

Both scarves are felted in the spiderweb technique, but using different wool breeds.  I think you can see how the blue/green one drapes much softer - it's primarily merino, bamboo, and silk.  The rainbow is lusterous and a combination of wensleydale and dorset sheep.

The first pic is of habotai silk I dyed this morning - I haven't decided if I'm going to nuno felt it or leave as-is.  The second scarf is really long, so I've doubled it up, but it is amazingly gorgeous blue faced leicester wool.

Both of these were done in the nuno felt technique of laminating wool to silk.  The first is silk habotai and the second is silk chiffon.  I have a lot of nuno felted pieces in the works right now, but it takes sooo long to complete a project.  They're done in stages.  This is really one area where I want to concentrate my efforts to learn new tricks.  Nuno felting is very versatile.

Well, I think that's all the picspam I'll unload on you today.  I'm about to crate off a mess of handbags and scarves to the museum and I hope they sell well.  *crosses fingers*  The more bags I sell... the more wool I can purchase... it's a vicious cycle.

And this is where it all starts:


 

 

Comments

[apollinav.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

Oh, well, that would be because I have a low attention span - so I craft-hop. But I'm concentrating efforts in wool now, because I'd like to get really really good at it instead of just proficient. Wool is a broad enough medium to satisfy my 'ooh shiny' tendencies.

[junewilliams7.livejournal.com]

Just the dyed silk without felting is gorgeous. 'ooh shiny' indeed!

[apollinav.livejournal.com]

Ah, well dyeing the silk has turned out to be the easiest part of the process. The habotai comes from Dharma trading and the dyes are from Jacquard. Add some water and white vinegar in a non-food crockpot, set it to low - and presto!